


Breaking Up

by ladycyon



Category: Star Trek Beyond - Fandom, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 09:16:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7568641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladycyon/pseuds/ladycyon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk did not expect this to be his final voyage aboard the USS Enterprise, but it was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breaking Up

Kirk’s heart sank he realized the ship was going down. He was sick of the white walls and the recycled air as much as he was tired of the endless meandering through the void, the directionlessness of it all. But he realized in that moment he hadn’t been ready to let go. Not yet.

The ship was as much a part of them as they were a part of it. And now the hull was breaking up. Everything shaking and groaning, all around them, metal twisting and shrieking as it bent. They had only seconds now, before the jagged teeth of the mountains erupting from the planet’s surface would chew them up.

Kirk stayed with the ship until the last. His eyes swept across the room that had been his home for so long, greedily taking in the last sight of it he might ever get as everything around him crumbled. The mountains rose up like skeletons. Something wrenched inside Kirk when he pushed the button. He was choking on a pointless goodbye he couldn’t begin to articulate.

And then he was falling.

–

Alien trees on a hostile planet stood like sentinels. The tracking signal from the ship guided them, but it was hard not to feel lost and small down among the gargantuan roots. Kirk kept moving, wouldn’t let himself believe there was anything he couldn’t achieve. Certainly there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do to protect his crew. Losing the ship or himself was one thing, but he could not lose them. But when they broke through the trees and found the wreckage, nothing had prepared him for the sight of it.

The ship was a demolished hunk of smoking metal. The crown jewel of Starfleet reduced to smoldering remnants. It would never fly again.

But the Enterprise wasn’t quite finished yet. It had sheltered them all for so long. Now it had one final gift to offer. Somewhere among its mangled ruins there remained something of value, something they all desperately needed, the one thing that could save them all - hope.

Kirk knew what he had to do. Heaving in a deep breath, he approached the ship for the final time.

–

When he left it, he ran. He didn’t look back. Not at the ship, not at the enemies pursuing him. He could only move forward. In his mind he held a picture of the ship as it had been such a short time ago - whole and safe. The way he hoped to find his crew.

That was the picture he wanted to keep. So much was uncertain, but one thing he knew for sure. He didn’t want to have that image burned into his mind. 

 James T. Kirk never saw that catastrophic monument, the final resting place of the Starship Enterprise.


End file.
